My exploration of the tarot continued this month as I found myself drawing the twos. Balance, choices, decisions – these are some of the main themes involved with the second card in each suit of the minor arcana.

One of the background themes on my mind this month, which you can find in these two drawings, is the ever-present reality of death – we consume food and we will become food. I’ve been re-reading some of Carlos Castaneda’s writing over the month, and much of the wisdom of the shaman Don Juan includes the constant reminder that death is always just a moment away, that time is not a luxury you can waste frivolously, and we are all a part of the process of consumption – consuming and being consumed. By making death our friend and companion we learn we’ll never know death’s touch until the perfect moment. Death, in this case should not be thought of through the filters of Western Civilization thinking which fears death, but instead should be thought of in the shamanistic way, with acceptance as one of many important steps along the path of life.

The drawing above is the Two of Pentacles, or Coins. It shows a person juggling his choices while shuffling his feet to maintain his balance. Surrounding, and ultimately constraining his choices is the symbol for eternity. The dance of his decisions is done within the jaws of the World Tree, always connecting the Above with the Below – the interior vision with the exterior world.

The drawing below is the Two of Swords. Swords, in the tarot, are symbolic of the air, of the intellect. The crescent moon rules over the mind here, which is blindly making decisions while the eyes of many serpents move up and down the World Tree. The teeth of the “dog-eat-dog” world are constantly present as a reminder of death and it’s ever-present closeness.

In both of these drawings I’ve been pleased by the amount of subconscious material has been embedded in the symbolism of the drawing. Each time I look at them I find more material revealed, more ideas surfacing to be considered. The descriptions of the drawing provided here are just a starting point and are by no means a final description – the point here is for each viewer to find ideas formed in their own minds triggered by the various symbolism of the drawings.

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This is where I always pause, while my brain quickly runs through the mental catalog of the numerous art objects I’ve created over my lifetime, the wide variety…

“I do all kinds of stuff…” I usually end up replying.

If they look like they might want to hear more, I might say, “Mostly I make collages. Just about everything I do is based on collage – putting separate items together to create a new image, object, idea, sound-scape etc.”

Most people seem to go blank at this point. That’s when I throw in a new idea for them to consider, “Right now I’m focused on consciousness, and how to make art out of consciousness.”

I’m very proud of the brave people who want to find out more after that…

Introducing PORTFOLIO

112 Paintings

98 Drawings

155 Collages

41 Photo Works

9 Videos

Sound Collages – 6 albums, 7 EPs, 5 Singles and 4 Early Works

I’ve spent the last week (about 80 hours of computer time) adding work to the online retrospective show of my art since 1991. This is a major upgrade to a site I started work on in 2011 – if you visited it before you’ll find that the whole site has been extensively updated.

It’s been a very involved process, and just might be my favorite website I’ve ever built.

I used to send faxes to my computer before I had a scanner in the late 1990’s to try and get image material for collages from physical space into digital space – something that’s so easy to do now, but back then, especially on my budget, it was a challenge…

The only fax machine I had access to was in the warehouse I worked at in Irvine. During the day I would call my computer at home and send it faxes of photos, drawings, newspaper clippings, whatever – and when I got home at night, they were usually there on my computer.

I was so happy when I got my first scanner, which required three passes to create a color scan – a several minute process – but it was so much better quality than using the fax machine from work.

I’ve decided to try and create a habit of posting an image a day on my Facebook page… a process I started a week and a half ago on the 19th.

Here’s the first image I posted.

All the images posted so far have been from a series called Raising The World Tree/Incoming Comet.

These mixed-media collages on paper are each about 7″ wide by 8 1/2 ” high and were created in 1997 and 1998.

Raising The World Tree

The idea of raising The World Tree is a common mythical theme in many different religions. Here’s the Wikipedia quote:

The world tree is a motif present in several religions and mythologies, particularly Indo-European religions, Siberian religions, and Native American religions. The world tree is represented as a colossal tree which supports the heavens, thereby connecting the heavens, the earth, and, through its roots, the underground. It may also be strongly connected to the motif of the tree of life.

I think of “Raising The World Tree” in the same way as the Hopi – that we currently live in the Fourth World which is coming to an end someday, at that point a new World Tree will be raising up which will be the beginning of the Fifth World.

Incoming Comet

One of the things that stood out while creating these pieces was the large red spot which moved through the drawings, a reoccurring icon like a comet of old, appearing in the sky like a harbinger of some event just beyond the horizon of the moment.

Here’s a painting from the same time I was doing the drawings, it’s called (Hank William’s) Lost Highway, and has the same red spot moving through it…

Last summer, and during August in particular, I went through a really bad depression – I mean – really bad. As you can see from the drawing to the left that I made of my brain in my sketchbook during that time it was not good.

On the same page I made this drawing I wrote the following – I call it…

Lazy, selfish,
lulled by isolation
into fearful creatures
launching preemptive strikes
shock and awe with sharp claws
and we roll on and on…

A few pages after this entry I made my drawings of The Monster Pill, which I posted yesterday, inspired by the ongoing and eternal prescription medication hassles…

Seriously people, in my opinion, nothing helps Bi-Polar II more than good medical marijuana (and good diet, exercise, sunlight… which I should do more of…) – but I faithfully go through the never-ending (over ten years now) search for a really effective prescription medication.

Everything I’ve left undone
has stuck to my flypaper mind.
They struggle and die in the place where I hide them away
and come back as suitcases filled with black holes.

Take my suitcases and give them wings
give them life, and flight, and a place to go.
I’m just going to lie down here because it’s all become too heavy for me…

This was just a few pages after The Monster Pill drawings and was one of a several attempts I made to document the depression while it was happening… I continued to struggled with this particular bout of depression through late October, 2008, when I finally got a month or so of good energy while we switched my medications, again.

I’ve been very busy over the last few weeks working on a project called “The Book of Days”; a multi-year work that involves various calendars, numerous subjects (like Mayan time, circular rhythms, astronomy, myths, religions, the story of creation, God, gods and other spiritual beings, Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Esau, the next 26,000 years, the world tree, and (this is the short list) one of the main characters – Ophiuchus… it’s a big project and it’s getting closer to launch every day…

Subscribe to my newsletter (see side bar on right) and I’ll update you as soon as the new blog site for The Book of Days is launched.

I did a number of drawings earlier this month while I was preparing my materials for this project… here’s the whole collection that I posted along with a few extras… enjoy and have a great Christmas.

Here’s another of the drawing I did while at Death Valley this last weekend (Thursday through Sunday).

Thinking about the World Tree still… lots of snakes and serpents getting in these drawings. I let my unconscious mind steer these drawings and I get surprised by what shows up… like those sand dunes near the bottom. I ended up doing the sand dune drawing (see image from 12-16-2008) after seeing those show up…

We returned from Death Valley this evening. Tania and I traveled out there with our 2 dogs, Tania’s brother Derek, and our best friend Tina to celebrate her birthday. Death Valley is beautiful in December, and cold…

We stayed in Stovepipe Wells at the motel near the sand dunes. We explored the sand dunes for quite awhile on Friday morning. The wind creates really beautiful shapes and forms…

On Saturday afternoon, as we were about to leave on another adventure across the park, we saw what looked like a wall of haze or cloud coming down from the north end of the park. The wind was starting to blow harder, and after some ominous sounding words from the maintenance guy about a sand storm that was about to hit us, we changed our plans and moved back to the motel room.

We settled in to watch the storm, popped open some cans of Coors and put on The Doors… as we all talked, hung out, and drank more beer I drew in my sketchbook and this is one of the drawings; the Sand Dunes at Stovepipe Wells with the Devil’s Cornfield in the foreground.

I decided to keep this one as a black and white ink drawing instead of adding any color.

about onehumanbeing.com

This website is designed, built and maintained by Jon, onehumanbeing.

onehumanbeing.com was established in 2008 as a way to initiate a new season of art for myself.

It is a super-project that launched a number of different sub-projects that have come and, mostly, gone (into my digital portfolio) such as redbotlovesyou.com, The Philip K. Dick Reading Club, The Turning, The MMJ Project, The MMJ Lists, The All-Seeing Eyebama, and UFOverdriver.

Most of this work has been done as Jungian experiments to explore the use of consciousness and the collective conscious as both subject matter and as an art material.